Published January 12, 2000
What is a really compelling reason to preserve all your computer data in a back-up copy? Probably none, except the ultimate disaster of total hard drive failure. Do you feel lucky?
The harsh fact is that every hard drive will fail. No question; it’s just a matter of time. You have been forewarned.
After all, hard drives are a mechanical device with constantly whirling discs and fragile servo-motors moving tiny sensors that pickup and record your precious files onto that magnetic marvel.
No one questions the necessity for fire, health, and liability insurance. Few would give a second thought to regular automobiles maintenance and repair. So why would our considerable dependence upon computers warrant any less care and protection?
Someday computer data will be permanently and safely stored within microchips, much like random access memory, only better. IBM holds the patent of such a device that is about the size of a sugar cube, powered by a watch battery, and stores a terabyte (a million million bytes) of data. Sorry, it’s not available yet. Until then, the most cost-effective and practical storage and retrieval mechanism is our faithful magnetic hard drives.
Fifteen years ago, a 30MB hard drive (enormous capacity for its day) costs $1400. Ten years ago, a much better 500MB package cost the same $1400. Today, a 10,000MB hard drive, superior to all predecessors, is a mere $400 or so. That which used to cost $46 is now less than 4¢ per million bytes of storage. [A mega-byte (MB) is approximately one million alpha-numeric characters.]
How much is your computer data worth? Could you afford the loss when the hard drive in your computer unexpectantly dies?
Be safe: protect your precious work-product by scheduling regular intervals for backing-up copies to a separate disc medium. Hesitancy to preserve the vulnerable mass of magnetic bits, stored somewhere within, may be more costly than the cure. Think of frequently duplicating data as routine, like oral hygiene.
The most viable and least costly of all options for back-ups is an external hard drive, twice as large as your existing hard drive’s capacity. For instance, double the primary storage of a 2,000MB hard drive is 4GB for about $200. Thereafter, a complete recovery, from a power dip, an operating system corruption, or virus attack, can be reinstalled in a matter of half an hour.
Commercially available software will automate the scheduling of a back-up during your lunch hour, or at midnight, if the computer is on. Staggered sets of saved backup copies are advisable, especially if some part of a more recent copy was corrupted.
Floppy discs are, without a doubt, the least viable option for back-ups. These days, don’t even think about them. They are too small (1.4MB), vulnerable to dust, heat and objects that might be magnetized, like pencils, paper clips and scissors.
Just for data safety and archival purposes, consider tape drives. They are very fast recorders (1GB per minute), high capacity (up to 300GB on a single tape), and easy for unattended recordings. However, tape isn’t intended for random access and extensive reuse.
Very popular these days are the Iomega drives: Jaz, Zip, and the earlier Bernoulli. Similar to the formerly PC-popular Syquest platters, they store 100, 250 or up to 2,000MB of data on a single removable cart. Nearly as fast as a sealed hard drive, their usefulness is universal. Over a million have been sold. But backing-up a modern hard drive volume to a tall stack of these is a bit spendy and awkward.
Castlewood Systems’ Orb 2.2GB drive cost less than Jaz, but have yet to be consistently reliable. Media and drive mechanism have reported failures. They too will improve, or something else will take its place.
Magneto-optical (MO) drives were all the rage a few years ago. Their cartridge, about the size of a floppy disc, holds 256 to 1500MB of data. A finely focused laser rewrites the digital information onto a double-sided spinning silvery disc. MOs are more expensive than magnetic removables and slower.
Currently in favor are compact disc (CD) and digital video disc (DVD) recordable and rewritables. The 650MB media is dirt cheep: $1 to $2 for the write-once recordables, and about $5 to $9 for rewritables. Nearly every modern computer is equipped with a CD-ROM (read-only memory). DVDs are somewhat more, but so is the planned 16.9GB storage density, particularly adaptable for full-length movies with surround-sound.
CD-R and CD-RWs are a poor choice as a hard drive replacement: too slow and too small. But for back-ups, archives, and transportability among any PC or Macintosh machine, they are really marvelous. Music and data can be stored on the same thin acrylic and aluminum platter. Or save and trade them as beverage coasters.
Burning a recording onto a CD is tricky, however. For instance, what is the media composition; 4x or 8x certified? Is the recording to be a disc-at-once, packet writing, or multi-session? The process requires uninterrupted processor delivery of data from a fast hard drive during the burn.
Successfully completed, the newly recorded CD has an expected life of 100 years; magnetic media is only viable for 4-10 years. DVD’s will likely be the next big thing in high capacity permanent data storage, adaptable to recording and playback of both formats.
Competence in doing business is to safeguard your work product. Make the commitment to save a copy regularly.